Isaiah 22

An Oracle Concerning Jerusalem

¹The oracle concerning the valley of vision.

What do you mean that you have gone up,

all of you, to the housetops,

²you who are full of shoutings,

tumultuous city, exultant town?

Your slain are not slain with the sword

or dead in battle.

³All your leaders have fled together;

without the bow they were captured.

All of you who were found were captured,

though they had fled far away.

⁴Therefore I said:

“Look away from me;

let me weep bitter tears;

do not labor to comfort me

concerning the destruction of the daughter of my people.”

⁵For the Lord God of hosts has a day

of tumult and trampling and confusion

in the valley of vision,

a battering down of walls

and a shouting to the mountains.

⁶And Elam bore the quiver

with chariots and horsemen,

and Kir uncovered the shield.

⁷Your choicest valleys were full of chariots,

and the horsemen took their stand at the gates.

⁸He has taken away the covering of Judah.

In that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest, ⁹and you saw that the breaches of the city of David were many. You collected the waters of the lower pool,¹⁰and you counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall.¹¹You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to him who did it, or see him who planned it long ago.

¹²In that day the Lord God of hosts

called for weeping and mourning,

for baldness and wearing sackcloth;

¹³and behold, joy and gladness,

killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,

eating flesh and drinking wine.

“Let us eat and drink,

for tomorrow we die.”

¹⁴The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears:

“Surely this iniquity will not be atoned for you until you die,”

says the Lord God of hosts.

¹⁵Thus says the Lord God of hosts, “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the household, and say to him:¹⁶What have you to do here, and whom have you here, that you have cut out here a tomb for yourself, you who cut out a tomb on the height and carve a dwelling for yourself in the rock?¹⁷Behold, the Lord will hurl you away violently, O you strong man. He will seize firm hold on you¹⁸and whirl you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a wide land. There you shall die, and there shall be your glorious chariots, you shame of your master's house.¹⁹I will thrust you from your office, and you will be pulled down from your station.²⁰In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah,²¹and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your sash on him, and will commit your authority to his hand. And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.²²And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.²³And I will fasten him like a peg in a secure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father's house.²⁴And they will hang on him the whole honor of his father's house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons.²⁵In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, the peg that was fastened in a secure place will give way, and it will be cut down and fall, and the load that was on it will be cut off, for the Lord has spoken.”